Democrats grappling with Existential identity crisis

After a bruising 2024 election, in which the Democrats lost the House, the Senate, the White House, and the popular vote for the first time in 20 years, the Democratic Party faces the political wilderness, and worse, an existential identity crisis.

Since Donald Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee the for the first time in 2016, and won the Presidency, the Democratic Party’s identity has centered around one thing; opposition to Trump.

At first, resistance politics seemed like a suitable reaction. The Democratic base was outraged by Trump, a man that many of them deemed beyond the pale. It thus followed that the Democratic Party should oppose everything that Trump did, rather than work with and legitimize him.

While never wildly successful, it could be argued that resistance politics worked. The Democrats comfortably won back the House of Representatives in 2018, and then narrowly won back the Senate and Presidency in 2020.

Nonstop resistance to Trump didn’t lead to many, if any, new intellectual policy ideas. But it did harness the energy of the extreme left into mobilization, and votes. And it seized upon the emphasis of identity politics; for minorities and women, who were purportedly being oppressed or silenced in Trump’s America.

Never mind the fact that Mr Trump actually saw a growth in minority support even in his 2020 election loss, the movement that the Democrats were able to use, against the manufactured narrative that Trump was elected as a sort of last gasp of the “privileged” groups of America to maintain their grip on the country, was able to give the Democratic Party an energy outlet, if not a bevy of new philosophical ideas.

But really, the electoral wins that the Democrats experienced after Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential victory, papered over the cracks of a problem in the Democratic Party’s policies and leadership.

Upon closer inspection, the Democratic Party’s 2018 gains in the House came thanks to a number of moderate Democrats winning in marginal districts. So while the Democratic Party became more extreme and won, the extreme movement politics were not the source of their electoral gains.

The same can be said about 2020. In the Senate, the Democratic Party would not have even won a majority (which was actually a 50-50 tie that was broken by virtue of the Democrats winning the Presidency and Vice Presidency), if not for spectacular political own goals made by Donald Trump.

In fact, on election night, in one of the Georgia races, incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue won the plurality of the votes. If this had been a Presidential contest, Purdue would have won the state.

But because Georgia’s Senate race rules say that if a candidate does not receive at least 50% of the vote on election night, there is a runoff, Purdue did not win. In fact, both Georgia Senate races went to a runoff.

In light of the controversies over the electoral counts in certain states in the 2020 election, and Donald Trump’s insistence that the election was rigged, Republican turnout was depressed for the runoff, and Democrats won both races. A win in just one of those races would have resulted in continued Republican Senate control.

Joe Biden did beat Donald Trump in the 2020 election. But while he won the popular vote by 4.5%, in what actually determines who wins the Presidency, the Electoral College, Mr Biden’s victory was an extraordinary slim 42k combined votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.

And we should remember that this election happened during the backdrop of a Covid pandemic, which Donald Trump was fairly and unfairly blamed for his handling, and an astroturfed racial movement about supposed systematic oppression of African Americans in the country.

Many of the riots after George Floyd’s death while in police custody were used to sign up and register voters, of course for the Democratic Party. These factors, coupled with then-President Trump’s poor debate performance, had many polls indicating, and many people predicting a Biden landslide win.

That the electoral outcome took days to come into view, and that in an environment of chaos, which Donald Trump was largely blamed for, and Joe Biden was viewed as a harmless moderate, the Democratic margin of victory was so slim, should have been a warning for Democrats.

At best, they had a mandate to not be Trump, and not much else. Not even in a neutral year was their margin this slim; this was a highly favorable environment, supposed to be their opportunity to electorally wipe out Trump and the MAGA ideology.

But instead of understanding that reality, the Democrats under Biden went extreme left. On immigration, they dismantled Trump’s restrictive policies, and allowed tens of millions of people to illegally come into the country. As seen in the early days of the new Trump administration, the flood of illegal crossing can be stopped, if the administration wants to.

They emphasized and celebrated mandating racial quotas, and Mr Biden could hardly go one speech without claiming that all non white Americans were oppressed. Under Biden, a professed Catholic, Democratic politicians would not say that they were opposed to abortion at any point in the pregnancy, even after the baby is viable outside the womb.

The Democratic Party also defended biological males entering female locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports, and then accused Republicans pointing out the ridiculousness of these policies of “politicizing the issue.”

Making matters worse, Biden, who claimed he would work to unite America and heal our divisions, after overseeing people who were led into the Capitol on January 6th being put in solitary confinement, and FBI raids on Catholic pro life individuals, in a speech, called most Trump supporters, not politicians who can make the law, “semi-fascists.”

Aided and abetted by a compliant media and information systems, most of these things were glossed over or outright not covered. But the tide started turning pretty early.

Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, his supercharging of inflation through injecting an opulent amount of money into the economy, the economic and cultural malaise people percieved, and the humiliation Americans felt being ruled by a party that slandered the country as systemically racist, and a President whose brain seemed to short circuit every few minutes, made the public quickly turn on the administration.

Still, we live in an extremely polarized, and relatively evenly divided country. Despite all of the failures and humiliations during the Biden term, and their nominee Kamala Harris’ clear lack of political talent, the Democrats were still in with a shot of winning in November of 2024.

But that of course did not happen. Not only did Donald Trump win all of the seven agreed upon swing states, he won the popular vote, a first for a Republican since 2004, and something he didn’t do when he won in 2016.

Donald Trump also saw skyrocketted support from minorities, specifically Hispanic and African American men. He even won the Hispanic male vote outright, taking 56% of that demographic.

The Democrats, long seen as the party of the working class, won voters who made over $100k a year, but lost those who made less than $100k. And with everything the Democrats and media threw at Trump, including law fare, FBI raids, court convictions, and an assassination attempt that came a fraction of an inch from ending his life, Donald Trump not only won, but won with a much bigger mandate than he had the first time.

And that is why Democrats are grappling with an existential identity crisis. They have tried nonstop resistance to Trump. They have tried opposing everything Trump does, and harnessing the identity politics movement. It has not worked. Americans do not agree with the Democratic Party’s apocalyptic portrayal of Trump.

And here is where the Democrats find their problem. They are squabbling amongst themselves about how to oppose Donald Trump, and what they stand for. The far left base of the Democratic Party wants continued confrontation with Trump, while the “moderates” (it is possible that no moderates exist in the Democratic Party, only pragmatists to) fear that endless confrontation with Trump will turn off the median American voter.

Beyond tactics of opposition, the Democratic Party does not know what set of policies they are for, and their philosophy. Are they economically populist but moderating on social policies? Do they placate their base on far left social policies?

Do Democrats pretend to be patriotic and admit that America is the greatest country in the world? Or would that offend their base, and do they need to keep claiming that American society is rife with oppression and racism?

Do the Democrats cater to the upscale socially liberal suburban woman? To the inner city impoverished single parent African American? Or the trans woman living in San Francisco? But how would that work when they are courting the Hamas supporting Arab American from Ann Arbor? And what about the socially conservative, patriotic working class white man from Pennsylvania?

Traditionally, the Democratic Party has tried to cater to all of these groups. But of course, that leads to incoherent policy, and policy positions that are inherently hostile to the average American voter.

You can’t have a philosophy if you make your party a checklist of patronage for every single group. And what’s more, the Democrats and American left have to contend with the possibility that maybe the American people do not agree with their vision of what our society is.

It is possible that Americans simply reject that wanting to stop illegal immigration is racist. Maybe Americans are fine with gay marriage, but draw the line on transgenderism. We can accept abortion being legal in some cases, but think they should be illegal in others.

And we can see that the country can still make improvements to make society fairer for all, but that we are not systemically racist, and poorer outcomes for certain groups are not necessarily caused by anything other than their choices.

The American left has so long seen themselves as the good guys, that admitting that America rejects some of their ideas may be tough. But with President Donald Trump’s approvals still in the positive and Democrats seeing new lows in Congressional approval, this is a reality that the left will eventually have to confront.

How will they react to it, and what will their political philosophy be? At this point, it’s impossible to know. It can go in any direction.